“—Ladybird.”
The little woman smiled as she tugged off the mittens, then leaned the cookie sheet against the side of her chair. She pulled a sheaf of green paper from her pocket.
“Here’s a napkin.” She handed out neatly folded cocktail napkins flocked with green and red mistletoe and “Merry Christmas 1991,” then she sat before her own tray. “Eat, eat,” she said with a fluttering of both hands. “Don’t be shy,” and picked up her fried chicken between index fingers and thumbs.
For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of Witt’s knife and fork and his muffled laughter.
Ooh, he would pay. Big time. Despite the fact that his mother was too damn sweet to be mad at.
Ladybird dabbed at her fingers. “So tell me, Max, was that your husband’s ghost you were talking to in the car?”
Chapter Six
Max’s fingers sent her water glass shooting across the TV tray. Witt choked on his forkful of chocolate brownie. Ladybird beamed at them both.
“Isn’t that what you were doing in the car? Talking to your husband’s ghost?”
Max looked from Witt to his mother and back to Witt. His ruddy complexion had turned a sickening shade of green. Afraid the brownie was lodged somewhere in his windpipe, she was about to rise and give him a well-deserved slap on the back, when he wheezed, swallowed, and managed a weak, “Behave yourself, Ladybird.”
“You told me not to ask her if she’s psychic, and I didn’t. I only asked about her husband, since you said he’d passed on.” She glanced quickly at Max. “You’re not offended, are you, my dear?” she asked, then went on without giving Max a chance to answer. “You see, I talk to my husband, Horace, all the time. So I know another person who talks to ghosts when I see one.”
“Mother,” Witt warned with a growl and a fearsome glare.
Max felt like a large turkey piece-part had gotten stuck somewhere on the way down her throat.
“DeWitt Quentin Long, talking with our loved ones who have passed on is not something to sneer at. Max is special.”
“Believe me, I know.” He didn’t sound particularly pleased about it.
Max’s eyes moved from one to the other like a ping-pong ball. So. His mother talked to a ghost. Now that was another pretty fact Witt had forgotten to mention. She turned to Ladybird who was fluffing her blue hair and looking expectant. “Yes, I was talking to Cameron. He’s been dead two years.”
Witt groaned.
“How did he die, my dear?” Ladybird’s gaze was kind, her smile gentle and beneficent.
“Robbery.” She couldn’t manage more than that one word.
“Did they catch the monster who did it?”
Max looked at Witt. She saw the pain there in his eyes, pain for the failure of his profession. She couldn’t do anything to ease it. “There were three of them, and no, they were never caught.”
She didn’t mention the other things those men had done. She only wondered if Witt had told his mother. God, the thought terrified her, as if he’d stripped her down and exposed her. He’d read the file, of course, he knew what they’d done to her after they’d killed Cameron, and though they’d never spoken of it, perhaps that also played a part in the stain of compassion and grief in his blue eyes. She prayed he’d kept that part from dear old Mom.
“I’m so sorry,” his mother murmured.
Max wanted to say something blithe, something comforting, like time heals all wounds. Except that it didn’t. She was as raw and bleeding inside as the day she’d watched those punks shoot a hole through Cameron’s head down at the corner 7-11.
And so much more isolated. When she’d met him, Cameron had tugged her out of her own painstakingly-constructed shell; she’d crawled back in the day he died and hadn’t broken out since.
Which was why Witt scared the hell out of her.
She chose not to acknowledge Ladybird’s sympathy. “Cameron’s a good sounding board when I’m worked up.” God, what an understatement. He was the only person she had left in the world, even if he wasn’t exactly of this world.
Ladybird pushed her tray aside. “Oh my, yes. Horace and I get along famously now that he’s dead. We used to fight like cats and dogs when he was alive.”
“It’s a wonder one of you didn’t kill the other,” Witt muttered.
“DeWitt really doesn’t like fighting,” she stage-whispered behind her hand as if he couldn’t hear. “I really can’t understand how he became a policeman. His father was a garbage man, you know. I really thought DeWitt would follow in his footsteps. He’s a bright boy, but he barely graduated from high school. And those hoodlum friends of his. Of course that girl—what was her name—I thought for sure he’d get her pregnant before he turned eighteen.”